1. Field of Invention
The present invention relates to techniques for text entry input into a search interface that assists users in both stages of text entry, including (1) locating the desired characters without having to look at the physical text entry device and (2) selecting the desired character or symbol.
2. Description of Related Art
User interface options to enter text input to a television using a remote control are currently very limited and cumbersome. Some remote controls just have numerals and do not have alphabets on the keypad as illustrated in FIG. 1. To overcome the limitation of the absence of alphabets on the remote control, some interfaces display a mapping of the keys of the remote control to the letters of the alphabet. The user must then find the appropriate key corresponding to the desired letter in the map and then look at the physical device to select the appropriate number key (a cognitive task that is perceived to be cumbersome by an average user). Another approach used in practice today is to have both numerals and alphabets listed in the form of a matrix as illustrated in FIG. 2 and have the user navigate the matrix using the five button interface (FIG. 3). This interface solves the problem of not having to look at the remote, but fails to address the long traversal paths between characters (explained in detail below).
Two prominent options for text entry input to television in practice today are (1) keypad based text entry and (2) “navigation and select” based text entry. Most keypad text entry interfaces in use today require the user to look at the remote control device to locate a character. This makes the interface hard to use, because the user has to toggle his visual focus between the remote control and the television screen. Additionally, looking at the remote control while watching television is cumbersome since the ambient lighting in the room may not be sufficient to see the remote control (e.g. watching television at night and in the dark).
Current “navigation and select” interfaces are also lacking, because the planar navigation distance is quite high in some of the popular interfaces for text entry, such as TIVO® (FIG. 2). A 10×4 matrix is shown, making it hard for user to easily locate a character on the screen —user needs to navigate long distances in order to reach between characters (the maximum traversal path is 12 hops to select an alphabet/number, assuming row and column movement only). The familiarity a user gains over time with usage does not assist in reducing the distance traversed between keys. This lack of reduction in effort expended would be perceived in most users' minds as a cumbersome interface.
An interface that can assist the user to (1) locate the desired character without having to look at the remote control and (2) select the located character easily from an overloaded keypad (or from an input device lacking a keypad), would significantly reduce the effort expended by the user to enter text.